Subject: Language Arts Grade: Eight

Standard: #7: Listening and Speaking

Key Concept: Practicing the elements of narration, including the description of how an event happened using details, conveys understanding of narrative technique.

Generalization: Students use dialogue, description, and sequence of details to tell a story.

Background: Students have been reading a variety of narrative stories in literature. In this lesson, they work on narrative examples according to their learning preferences.

The overall goal in all groups is to understand elements of the narrative technique.

This lesson is tiered in product according to learning profile.

Tier I: Kinesthetic Learners

Students in this group will choose an event that they wish to retell in class. They will script their event and will include dialogue, descriptive details that make the event more dynamic, and clearly sequenced actions. Each student in the group will then take part in performing the narrative event for the class. This activity can also be done without dialogue at all. In other words, the narrative techniques must come through with clearly determined actions.

Tier II: Artistic Learners

Students in this group will cartoon an event to narrate to the class. The group will collaborate on the cartoon, and will include dialogue, description and clear sequencing in frames to tell the story. They will draw the cartoon on paper to display in the classroom.

Tier III: Musical Learners

Students in this group will choose a musical score that clearly tells a story through use of a variety of motifs and techniques Peter and the Wolf is such a musical narrative. They should choose a clear example and describe the story that the music relates, including descriptive details and dialogue (if the music includes this) in the presentation.

Tier IV: Interpersonal Learners

Students in this group should divide in dyads and interview another group member concerning an important event that has occurred in the past month. The interview should incorporate description, details, and sequencing of events in questions the interviewer asks.

Assessment: Each group is studying and practicing narrative techniques in this lesson. However, the groups are designed to accommodate learning preferences. Sharing the different products that groups developed in response to the task of working with narrative techniques would strengthen the overall idea of how narration operates in a variety of formats. Each group's product should be assessed individually for how well it responded to its individual task. A logical writing task to follow would be to write a journal entry explaining the narrative process in general and the specific application each student worked on in particular.

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8LL-FAD